iPhone 4 IOS 4.2 iPod play/pause button "size" (hitting skip forward/back)

This is a huge annoyance. Especially because when I need to pause I may be in a rush, and this leads me to use my thumb rather than my fingers to hit the button (as my other hand is doing something else), and this further increases my chance of missing. It has happened to me countless times.

Just to keep numbers coming, you can add me to the list as well. Registered on this forum just to reply to this post.

Listening to many hours of audio books and podcasts, even if you know those controls are too close and try your hardest not to press that ****** FF button, you still manage to do it. And it drives me mad.

Any suggestion what to do? is there a support line/email to report to?

Great news, I dunno if it was iOS 5 or one before but the airplay button isn't there anymore.

Horrible news: on the lock screen, the rev/ff are now even closer to the pause/play button. What an insane accessibility oversight on a touchscreen device. I've been having this problem for almost a year, and now it's much worse. What gives? Anyone have a fix besides maybe jail breaking and getting a whole new look for music(the old iPod app)?

+1

This is driving me crazy for the same reasons as everyone else, for a company so good at UI design this seems to be a massive oversight! No matter how hard i concentrate I still often manage to press the skip button instead of pause.

I was really hoping this would be fixed in iOS 5 but i guess not. 😟

Agree 100%. This is just nuts. A fix is needed badly.

I agree. too. I'm just afraid that apple will pull this post like they did the last as a "rant against apple".

Fix this for pete's sake. it is not that hard.

Me too, me too. Like many of you I also listen primarily to audiobooks and accidentally skipping forward to the next break or back to the last is *very* annoying. It's not like there isn't horizontal space that could be used. The skip forward/back buttons could be moved to the extreme right/left of the panel (at least in the "quick access" mode) and provide plenty of room.

Personally, I love the way the Audible.com app handles it. You can tap anywhere on the screen to pause and have to swipe to get it to go forward/back. Unfortunately, I have to unlock my screen to get to the audible app. The built-in "quick access" is brilliant but the interface needs to be better.

What does it take for the Apple devs to notice these topics? Do they ever post on these boards?

Oh good, not just me then. It's the lock screen music controls that get me most often, especially if I'm looking at them at a slight angle (if it's on a table next to me, for example). If they've been moved to make space for additional buttons, it would be good to have the layout be dynamic to accomodate them only when needed - I only ever seem to see the three regular buttons anyway.

I can't believe this hasn't been addressed, or even acknowledged that it's an issue.

I can't believe this hasn't been fixed. Apple are supposed to be very particular about their UI.

Any updates?

I use this feature to quickly pause my podcasts at work but because I don't want to pick up my phone everytime somebody comes to my desk, this means I have to try to pause while it is at an angle. I am constantly rewinding or fast forwarding TO THE EXTREME instead of hitting the play/pause button.

These three buttons are close, even closer than they appear in the ipod app, why? As others have posted, there is plenty of room, WHY?

I either want one LARGE play/pause button or make the ff and rw buttons ff or rw only a few seconds at a time.

Happy 2012!

This is still such an unbelievably, surreally un-Apple annoyance!

The silence here on resolving it is deafening, after so many months.

For me, there isn't even any other feature using the space outside the crowded 3 buttons. Why??

I just wanted to chime in as yet another iPhone user whose normal fingers and average dexterity often miss the play/pause button and bump the forward or back button instead. It is aggravating. These buttons are needlessly tiny and crowded...the space to the left and right of them is unoccupied.

If it's difficult for we normal users to hit the correct button consistently, I can only imagine what it's like for someone with motor control problems. Perhaps we should contact an advocacy group for disabled persons to pressure Apple to fix this.

As someone who works in UX myself, I experience some fremdschämen for the UX folks at Apple who have let this slide for so long.

Without a doubt, those closely-spaced buttons are the only real frustration that I have with my iPhone. It would be so ridiculously easy for Apple to space those buttons out. Some developer would just need to load the interface file, click and drag the buttons around a bit, then commit the source code back to the repository. I know there are process issues that I'm skipping over... but seriously... this kind of UI change would be trivial to implement, it's an obvious sore spot...

What is the problem?